According to Gartner, effective governance is a key success factor for Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions today and in the future. This endorsement of The Open Group standard by ISO is exciting, because it means that this vendor-neutral, proven SOA governance standard is now available to governments and enterprises world-wide.

Published by The Open Group in 2009, the SOA Governance Framework enables organizations—public, private, large and small—to develop their own robust governance regimens, rapidly and using industry best practices. This substantially reduces the cost and risk of using SOA. As an international standard, the framework will now provide authoritative guidelines for companies across the globe to implement sound SOA governance practices.

The framework includes a standard governance reference model and a mechanism for enterprises to customize and implement the compliance, dispensation and communication processes that are appropriate for them. Long term vitality is an essential part of the framework, and it gives guidance on evolving these processes over time in the light of changing business and technical circumstances, ensuring the on-going alignment of business and IT.

This is The Open Group’s second international standard on SOA, the first being the Open Services Integration Maturity Model (OSIMM), which passed ISO ratification in January 2012. Since then, we have seen OSIMM being considered for adoption as a national standard in countries such as China and Korea. We are hoping that the new SOA Governance Framework International Standard will be given the same consideration. The Open Group also contributed its SOA Ontology and SOA Reference Architecture standards to JTC1 and is engaged in the development of international standards on SOA there.

In addition to submitting our SOA standards for international ratification, The Open Group is actively leveraging its SOA standards in its Cloud architecture projects. In particular, the Cloud Governance Project in The Open Group Cloud Computing Work Group is developing a Cloud Governance Framework based on and extending the SOA Governance Framework. This emerging standard will identify cloud specific governance issues and offer guidance and best practices for addressing them.

Finally, The Open Group is engaged in the development of Cloud architecture standards in JTC1, and in particular in the new Collaboration between ISO/IEC JTC1 SC38 and ITUT’s Cloud groups to create a common Combined Team Cloud Vocabulary and Combined Team Cloud Architecture. All of this is very exciting work, both for the SOA and for the Cloud Computing Work Group. Stay tuned for more developments as these projects progress!

Heather Kreger is IBM’s lead architect for Smarter Planet, Policy, and SOA Standards in the IBM Software Group, with 15 years of standards experience. She has led the development of standards for Cloud, SOA, Web services, Management and Java in numerous standards organizations, including W3C, OASIS, DMTF, and Open Group.Heather is currently co-chair for The Open Group’s SOA Work Group and liaison for the Open Group SOA and Cloud Work Groups to ISO/IEC JTC1 SC7 SOA SG and INCITS DAPS38 (US TAG to ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC38). Heather is also the author of numerous articles and specifications, as well as the book Java and JMX, Building Manageable Systems, and most recently was co-editor of Navigating the SOA Open Standards Landscape Around Architecture.

Dr. Chris Harding is Director for Interoperability and SOA at The Open Group. He has been with The Open Group for more than ten years, and is currently responsible for managing and supporting its work on interoperability, including SOA and interoperability aspects of Cloud Computing. He is a member of the BCS, the IEEE and the AEA, and is a certified TOGAF practitioner.